Events in Syria have recently clearly taken a turn for the worse and there is an increasing amount of evidence that the Russian task force in Syria is being targeted by a systematic campaign of “harassing attacks”. First, there was the (relatively successful) drone and mortar attack on the Russian Aerospace base in Khmeimin. Then... Read More

I have recently had the pleasure of watching a short presentation by Professor Stephen F. Cohen entitled “Rethinking Putin” which he delivered on the annual Nation cruise on December 2, 2017 (see here for the original Nation Article and original YouTube video). In his short presentation, Professor Cohen does a superb job explaining what Putin... Read More

So, finally, the suspense is over. Kind of. The US Treasury has finally released the list of Russian entities and individuals which could (conditionally!) be sanctioned by the US Treasury in compliance with the H.R.3364 - Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. These two short excerpt from the report show why I say "could": and... Read More

The drama which is unfolding in northern Syria is truly an almost ideal case to fully assess how weak and totally dysfunctional the AngloZionist Empire has really become. Let's begin with a quick reminder. The US-Israeli goals in Syria were really very simple. As I have already mentioned in a past article, the initial AngloZionist... Read More

Informationclearinghouse recently posted an article by Darius Shahtahmasebi entitled "Israel Keeps Bombing Syria and Nobody Is Doing Anything About It". Following this publication I received an email from a reader asking me the following question: While in his article Darius Shahtahmasebi wonders why the world is not doing anything to stop the Israelis ("Why haven’t... Read More

Just a few days shy of the first year since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States I think that it would be reasonable to say that pretty much everybody, besides the Neocons and a few unconditional supporters, is now feeling quite appalled at what the past year brought to the... Read More

Introductory note: I wanted to touch upon this subject for a long, long while, because it is one I care about a lot. However, it is also totally off-topic for this blog. However, since in Russia there is a lull (that is putting it mildly) between New Year and the Orthodox Nativity, I decided to... Read More

If the first months of 2017 were a time of great hopes following the historical defeat of Hillary Clinton, the year is ending in a sombre, almost menacing manner. Not only has the swamp easily, quickly and totally drowned Trump, but the AngloZionist Empire is reeling from its humiliating defeat in Syria and the Neocons... Read More

My recent analysis of the potential consequences of a US attack on the DPRK has elicited a wide range of reactions. There is one type of reaction which I find particularly interesting and most important and I would like to focus on it today: the ones which entirely dismissed my whole argument. The following is... Read More

First, the bragging dummies Trump and Haley are still at it. The want to force China to take action against the DPRK by threatening to take North Korea "into their hands" if China refuses to comply. Haley said “But to be clear, China can do more, (...) and we're putting as much pressure on them... Read More

General Ratko Mladic, now 75, was sentenced last week to life in prison by the NATO kangaroo court known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It is worth mentioning here that, just like Bosnian-Serb President Radovan Karadzic and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Mladic was attested and handed over to this NATO... Read More

I am often asked if the US and Russia will go to war with each other. I always reply that they are already at war. Not a war like WWII, but a war nonetheless. This war is, at least for the time being, roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% kinetic. But in political terms... Read More

Today, with the kind permission of Phil Butler, I am posting the full text of my contribution to his book “Putin’s Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls“. There are a couple of reasons for that. The main one is that I strongly believe that this book deserves a much bigger visibility than it has... Read More

SouthFront has just released a very interesting video analysis warning about the possibility of a war involving Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and, possibility, Syria, Iran, and Israel. That, of course, also means that Russia and the US would be involved. First, please see the video here: What I propose to do is go over the implications... Read More

There are two myths which are deeply imprinted in the minds of most US Americans which are extremely dangerous and which can result in a war with Russia. The first myth is the myth of US military superiority. The second myth is the myth of US invulnerability. I believe that it is therefore crucial to... Read More

"Do you think his assessment is accurate?" was the subject line of an email I got from a good friend recently. The email referred to the article by Paul Craig Roberts "One Day Tomorrow Won't Arrive" which claimed that "the US military is now second class compared to the Russian military". The article then went... Read More

The latest big news out of the Ukraine Have you heard what the latest big news out of the Ukraine is? No? There is a mini-Maidan under way and Ukrainian nationalists seem to hope that Poroshenko will be kicked out before the end of the week. You did not know? Well, that is the real... Read More

In May of 2016 I wrote an article for the Unz Review entitled “Counter-Propaganda, Russian Style” in which I tried to show the immense difference between the old, Soviet, approach to propaganda and counter-propaganda and the approach taken by the Russian authorities today. The main difference was this: if the Soviet went out of their... Read More

I won’t even bother discussing the substance of what Trump had to say today because what he said deserves no such attention. I will quickly mention that yesterday Trump pulled the US out of UNESCOon behalf of Israeli interests. Today he basically announced a tepid, possibly hot, war on Iran. I am tempted to say... Read More

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the longest experiment in Communism in recent history. Many saw this event as the proof that Communism (or Marxism-Leninism, I use these interchangeably here) was not a viable ideology. After all, if in Russia Communism was formally ended in 1991, the Chinese quietly... Read More

The recent referenda in Catalonia and Kurdistan, while by no means crucial developments for Russia, have resulted in a lively debate in the Russian media and the Russian public opinion. The Kremlin itself has refrained from making any strong statements, possibly indicating that there might be several schools of thought on these issues in key... Read More

This is a topic which has had so much written about it that you could fill an entire city library with books entirely dedicated to this topic. Marx took a shot at it. As did Sartre. There were, of course, also plenty of good books written on this topic, but rather than list them all,... Read More

By now many of you must have heard the news: a Russian Lieutenant-General, Valery Asapov, and two Colonels have been killed in what appears to be a very precisely targeted mortar attack. Just as in the case of the Russian military police unit recently attacked near Deir ez-Zor, the Russians are accusing the Americans of... Read More

Something rather unprecedented just happened in Syria: US backed “good terrorist” forces attempted a surprise attack against Syrian government forces stationed to the north and northeast of the city of Hama. What makes this attack unique is that it took place inside a so-called “de-escalation zone” and that it appears that one of the key... Read More

Late this morning, outraged emails started pouring in. My correspondents reported "getting sick" and having their "heart ache". The cause of all that? They had just watched Trump's speech at the UN. I sighed and decided to watch the full speech for myself. Yeah, it was painful. You can read the full (rush,not official) text... Read More

Dear friends: During our conversation you stated the following: The US needs a military One of the reasons why the US needs a military are regimes like the North Korean one The US has a right to intervene outside its borders on a) pragmatic and b) moral grounds During WWII the US “saved Europe” and... Read More

For a while already the Russian diplomats have been openly saying that their American counterparts are недоговороспособны or “non-agreement capable”. This all began under Obama, when Kerry flew to meet with Lavrov and declared ‘A’, then flew back to Washington, DC and declared ‘B’. Then there were the cases in Syria when the US agreed... Read More

I have to begin this analysis by asking for your understanding for the fact that it will include a lot of full-length quotes. Under normal circumstances, I would have simply provided links, but considering the topic I will be discussing, and how some things suddenly “disappear” on the Internet, full-length quotes is probably the best... Read More

First, a quick disclaimer or, should I say, a clarification: When I speak of minorities, as I will below, I do that as a person who belongs to a long list of minorities. I was born in a family of Russian refugees. Right there, that makes me part of a (rather small) minority. Furthermore, I... Read More

First, my writing on the wall In October of last year a wrote an analysis I entitled The USA are about to face the worst crisis of their history and how Putin’s example might inspire Trump and I think that this is a good time to revisit it now. I began the analysis by looking... Read More

The latest news craze is about the possible delivery of US anti-tank weapons (the FMG-148 Javelin is often mentioned) to the Nazi junta in Kiev. These stories typically include a discussion of “defensive” vs “offensive” and “lethal” vs “non-lethal” weapons and always display a child-like belief in the existence of some magic technology which would... Read More

With the Neocon coup against Trump now completed (at least in its main objective, that is the neutralization of Trump, the subsidiary objective, impeaching Trump and removing him from office remains something for the future) the world has to deal, yet again, with a very dangerous situation: the AngloZionist Empire is on a rapid decline,... Read More

The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response have resulted in a torrent of speculations in the official media and the blogosphere – everybody is trying to make sense of a situation which appears to make no sense at all. Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when... Read More

A reader, SunriseState, has recently posted the following question in the comments section: “what would you say is the most optimal Russian strategy vs Poland?“. When I read it I thought “now that is an interesting question indeed!”. Today I will try to answer it, going step by step. First, a diagnosis. There is a... Read More

First, we have the manner in which the Americans have been preparing the G20 summit. As we all know, in diplomacy actions count as much, or even more, than words. Here are just a few of the actions recently taken by the Americans in preparation for the G20 summit and Trump’s first meeting with Putin... Read More

The talk of the week is the upcoming meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin on the sidelines of the G20 conference this Friday. There have been some very good articles already written on this topic, I particularly recommend Adam Garrie’s “5 obstacles Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will have to address in their meeting” for... Read More

The Internet has been buzzing with reactions to the latest Stratfor report about how a military confrontation between Russia and the United States would play out. I did not find the full text, I suppose it is behind a Stratfor paywall or for subscribers only (and, frankly, I have better use for my time and... Read More

By now most of you have heard the latest bad news of out Syria: on June 18th a US F/A-18E Super Hornet (1999) used a AIM-120 AMRAAM (1991) to shoot down a Syrian Air Force Su-22 (1970). Two days later, June 20th, a US F-15E Strike Eagle shot down an Iranian IRGC Shahed 129 drone.... Read More

Russia has often been in the news over the past years, mostly as the demonized “Empire of Mordor” responsible for all the bad things on the planet, especially Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, the Russian intervention in Syria and, of course, the “imminent” Russian invasion of the Baltics, Poland or even all of Western Europe.... Read More

First, a quick who's who We will probably never find out what truly was discussed between Trump, the Saudis and the Israelis, but there is little doubt that the recent Saudi move against Qatar is the direct results of these negotiations. How do I know that? Because Trump himself said so! As I mentioned in... Read More

First, a confession: I really don't know how the corporate media has covered the Trump trip to NATO and the G7 summit. Frankly, I don't really care – it's been a long while since I stopped listening to these imperial shills. There is a risk in completely ignoring them, and that risk is the risk... Read More

Robert Fisk put it best: “Trump Is About To Really Mess Up In The Middle East”. Following his fantastically stupid decision to attack the Syrian military with cruise missiles, Trump or, should I say, the people who make decisions for him, probably realized that it was “game over” for any US policy in the Middle-East... Read More

I have decided to share with you something which I originally sent out to the key members of the Saker community: my recommendation on how to keep your private communications private in the age of “Big Brother” aka NSA, ECHELON, GCHQ, Unit 8200, etc. I have been interested in the topic of encryption for many... Read More

For weeks now I have been getting panicked emails with readers asking me whether the USA had developed a special technology called “super fuses” which would make it possible for the USA to successfully pull-off a (preemptive) disarming first strike against Russia. Super-fuses were also mentioned in combination with an alleged lack by Russia of... Read More

With the upcoming French Presidential election in France the topic of Islam in Europe has again become central to the political discourse. This is nothing new, we also saw that in the UK, in Holland, in Austria and even in Switzerland where the Muslim communities were banned – by popular referendum - from building minarets... Read More

By now you must have heard it – Putin is “persecuting the Jehovah's Witnesses” in Russia. Alas, this one is true. Well, this is maybe not nearly as terrible as the Ziomedia makes it sound, but still, a pretty bad and fundamentally misguided policy. Why did the Russian government take such a drastic decision? The... Read More

Now that Trump has already comprehensively betrayed all his campaign promises and his 100 first days in office are marked by nothing else but total chaos, incompetence, betrayals of his closest friends and allies, recklessly dangerous and utterly ineffective grandstanding in foreign policy, there are a lot of people out there who say “I told... Read More

First, a painful, but needed, clarification: Basement crazies. Neocons. Zionists. Israel Lobbyists. Judaics. Jews. Somewhere along this list we bump into the proverbial “elephant in the room”. For some this bumping will happen earlier in the list, for others a little later down the list, but the list will be more or less the same... Read More

The latest US cruise missile attack on the Syrian airbase is an extremely important event in so many ways that it is important to examine it in some detail. I will try to do this today with the hope to be able to shed some light on a rather bizarre attack which will nevertheless have... Read More

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article for the Unz Review entitled “The Empire should be placed on suicide watch”. As always, I also reposted it on my blog. One of the commentators, J.L. Seagull posted a comment which intrigued me. He wrote: This got me very interested in the book he mentioned.... Read More

It's rare to see so much bullshit packed into one post...
Everything you just said about the Soviet Union is pure VOA propaganda crap...
And since it is a certainty that you have never been to the USSR yourself...I can only imagine what a fool it takes to pop off about something he has never ev...

This article is sheer nonsense from start to end. Well I gave up reading half way through, so maybe - to be completely fair - plain truth somehow broke through at the end.
Look, international law is dead letter at this point and Snaker knows it. Might makes Right is the only international ...

Emotionally, Andrei , I am with Yuri, but if emotions removed I have to agree with you. However, I do think it is important not to overplay patience thing. Timing of well placed punch is also important and I do wonder is there will be will to act when time is right.

I think SU economy was actually not so bad (inside the USSR, not satelites),
but a little too much spending on military.
On the contrary, it was pretty bad. Control economy does that to you, it considers everything as an exercise in military planning.
Empty stores, scant infrastructure, sh...

Do not tell we Soviet people. Majority was against it. It is your personal opinion. I was against it and so was everybody I knew personally. Elites indeed sold us. But they were barking upon wrong tree, the tree that already passed its prime and was dying. We are seeing the process right now of t...

Now we hear of Russian casualties in the US raid on a Syrian column (along with widely exaggerated claims of “hundreds” of killed Russians)... Killing Russians “on the margins”, so to speak, either with plausible deniability or, alternatively, killing Russians private contractors is much ...

I agree, the largest reason the SU fell was because of certain leaders inside the SU who want it.
They thought the West would be friends.
The game was called "convergence". The same thing Lenin and Trotsky wanted.
West and Russia join into one. However, Lenin and Trotsky were opposed by An...

You may be right (who knows).
Syria used to be controlled by France/UK wasnt it? (dont know much about it).
Both France and UK are still mini imperialist minded. But generally the US is the king of that.
Perhaps Syria will split into three?
a)Israel-US
b)Turkey
c)Syria-Russia-Iran?
...

Just dreams. I think all the SAA has is S-200 old complex and probably some obsolete BUKs.
1.SAA has a significant number of Pantsir-S1.
2. Buk, especially BukM1 and especially M2 are NOT obsolete--these are thoroughly modern systems but what you meant was probably Kub systems, which SAA als...

Here's what you said about the S200...
'...It has range of 200km, could use nuk warhead, an active homing head and liquid-propellant engine.
Active homing makes it difficult to use now when effective reflection square of aircrafts decreased significantly. And I believe it’s not very effec...

Couple of reasons...
First...the Israeli pilots are some of the best around...as Sprey mentioned in that snippet I quoted...
They are a tough adversary...they train all the time against missions like this...they have had opportunity to train against earlier S300 SAMs...since Greece [a Nato ...

Wow FB, that's quite an analysis. Your reasoning makes sense, but I am left with 1 question: why has it taken the Syrians 35 years to down their 1st Israel fighter jet? If, like you say, people and ideas come 1st and 2nd respectively and can do a lot with even outdated equipment like the Serbs di...

Of course he will, when he will be so depressed that the only good option open to him will be getting roasted himself. But it is indeed more comforting for certain people to believe in fairy tales of the like you spin here.

Trump may or may not be an overage infant, but this was a US Government decision by ruthless, experienced generals, to do something kinetic and probe the adversary’s reaction. The absence of a sufficiently severe reaction contributed to the present mess.
Exactly
Longer term, Israelis hav...

It is a bit more complicated, OK–it is much more complicated than this. What most people miss here is the fact that “localization” of Syrian AD is already in progress. What is known for sure at this stage, February 2018:
Well, it is complicated. And I said - "should at least supply ". Th...

Ok, I'm sorry for being rude. Excuse me.
I also happen to think that the best thing, for the moment, is for you to stick to your president.
But please let me deside myself where to stick to. BTW I already mentioned that I'm not Putin's supporter.

No, it just needs to stop anyone else from profiting. Currently, the prime target for denial of resources is China, but…..You may fool yourself into thinking that chaos and denial will be cheap. But you'll be going counter to the interests of the countries in question -- who want peace and pro...

Disasters? Everything went according to the plan. Not the plan you have read in the newspapers. The real plan.I doubt the "real plan" was to give Afghanistan back to the Taliban, and give Iran extra influence in Iraq and Syria, which is what is happening now, in spades.
So you can stop fooling...